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July 14, 2012 at 3:06 am #762444
kootchmanMemberI don’t attack the poor or the needy. You patronize them. You hold them as incapable to make sensible choices. I don’t. No, I took i thome and had lemon juice with a touch of olive oil. Yea Jan.. but it was a better choice than a Big Mac…. and I don’t feast at Mikey D’s daily. I dont give a rats ass if they eat Doritos and suck down Slurpees… morning noon and night… I do care that the effect is it costs hugh dollars in healthcare costs.. why subsidize it? We no longer give out free cigarettes with combat rations either. The brass decided… this isn’t healthy,let’s not encourage it.
July 14, 2012 at 3:18 am #762445
JoBParticipantDBP
i just now saw this
“Taking a page from Oscar Wilde, I define an anti-government fanatic as someone who knows “the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
i would offer you a standing ovation but it’s too hard to type all bent over like that ;->
well done!
July 14, 2012 at 3:23 am #762446
JoBParticipantkootch…
“You hold them as incapable to make sensible choices. I don’t.”
no.. you would much rather blame them for what you decided were bad choices for them.
meg..
easy answer to why we live longer and look beautifuler ?
we’re pickled :(
July 15, 2012 at 4:07 am #762447
kootchmanMemberI don’t hand out cigarettes to children JoB because it’s bad for them. Then why would I support with my taxes 12 tablespoons of corn sugar for a 1litre bottle of carbonate water? You think those are good choices? Food stamps for unprocessed foods is a better health choice. You can’t address healthcare in any rational voice unless you discuss food. In an imaginary world.. you have one option to improve the national health.. only one. Every health professional will tell you.. eat right and exersize. frozen corn dogs with tater tots on the side…. we should subsidize it?
July 15, 2012 at 6:14 am #762448
megMemberHere’s a funny and enlightening post proposing a different, more honest, plan than ObamaCare. From a guy in Massachusetts who already knows the pitfalls of RomneyCare. He walks us through some of the unconsidered and possibly unintended consequences, a humorous perspective from the front-line.
Considering the alternative, this sounds good to me. How bout ya’ll?
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2012/03/modest-health-care-proposal.html
July 15, 2012 at 7:12 am #762449
dobroParticipantThe best part of that post was a comment from a New Zealander…
“Governments can do health care better and cheaper than corporations. In fact, adding in corporations and competition actually makes it far more expensive.
New Zealand’s healthcare is paid for in general taxes and costs about $2k/capita compared to the ~$6k/capita of the US. Yes, the two are comparable as far as quality goes.”
July 15, 2012 at 7:27 am #762450
kootchmanMemberIt has the advantage though of being clear and concise.
July 15, 2012 at 8:45 am #762451
kootchmanMemberIs that a banjo I hear? Dueling Quotes?
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..” — Winston Churchill
July 15, 2012 at 2:58 pm #762452
JoBParticipantkootch..
“I don’t hand out cigarettes to children JoB because it’s bad for them. Then why would I support with my taxes 12 tablespoons of corn sugar for a 1litre bottle of carbonate water? “
but kootch.. you do
with those subsidies to corn growers
and the subsidies to soda producers
and why would you do that?
because they make big big political contributions
i am too tired to follow the money today
but i am betting i don’t have to
ya think?
July 15, 2012 at 3:02 pm #762453
JoBParticipantJuly 15, 2012 at 7:52 pm #762454
megMemberJoB, That’s why Repeal & Replace is necessary.
Personally, I would rather have govt. out of any medical care business (it’s a lie to call it health care), and that includes this most singular monstrosity, called Obamacare ACA. However as a compromise, I’d settle for an eventual single-payer system, but Only if this country is also working at top-priority to contain the horribly high medical costs ahead of time.
That cost, my peeps, is a big reason why being anti-junk and pro-nutrition/nutrient-dense eating is so extremely important. Yes, government should Not fund agricultural subsidies and Yes, government Should fund food stamps only for the purchase of unprocessed nutritious foods. Only.
Does everyone understand how your ‘soda-n-chips-dime’ becomes your ‘whole-wallet-coronary-disease’?
Think about it and study how the body really works. It’s easy to let your confirmation biases lead you, but try to listen for a wide variety of practitioners who treat modern chronic disease. Ask naturopaths, endocronologists, nutritionists, CV physicians, whatever.
Then go to the library and ask your Father of Western Medicine, old Hippocrates. Nearly 2500 years ago he said:
“All Disease Begins in the Gut.” 460 BC
All Disease. That was one smart dude. He also said, “First, do no harm.”
He is saying, It seriously matters what you put (or don’t put) into your pie-hole. And it matters, all the time.
July 15, 2012 at 11:17 pm #762455
kootchmanMemberwell JoB .. I had to look. The Farm Bill…. 80% of the farm is not crop subsidy, fallow set asides, price supports or federal crop insurance. 80% of the Farm Bill is…. Food Stamps. Most of the farmers and ranchers in my family call it a catch 22…. they don’t want it. BUT… to get loans for equipment, seed, etc… they have to plant crops with a “minimum” return to get federal farm loans. Round and round it goes.. a simple crop subsidy to protect the 30 acre family farm … when there was no international market or marketing co-ops.. grew and grew and grew.. like every federal program does. And they have completely morphed into conflicting interests. when ya grow 20,000 acres of corn… with a price support kick-in… we get high fructose sugars, ethanol subsidy, petro and energy intensive fertilizers, and a pesticide and fungicidal industry… the government spends more to boost yields and then subsidizes the consumption of the excess production… and then we “pay” consumers to buy the myriad of end uses and by-products of the producers who find a thousand ways to market and package it all. Laughing their asses off at our stupidity cause now they can tax us to make their product offerings cheap and accessible to all. Especially the poor.
meg.. I love it.. soda n’ chips dimes for whole wallet coronary disease.. and diabetes, and kidney disease, and liver disease, and cancer..
July 16, 2012 at 1:24 am #762456
JoBParticipantmeg..
“oda n’ chips dimes for whole wallet coronary disease.”
blaming people for their illness won’t make it go away
and it won’t protect you from getting ill.
you do realize that the food chain is only as clean as the soil that it grows in and the water that nurtures it, don’t you?
For that, you need to go after the real disease causing culprits.. corporate polluters.
in the meantime, blaming people who have little enough pleasure in their lives for their sweets is not going to accomplish much.
July 16, 2012 at 2:48 am #762457
kootchmanMemberIt WILL absolutely keep you healthier for longer periods of time. No one is saying a “treat” is a bad thing.. or there is anyone to “blame”.. but facts are tough to argue Ms. JoB… As long as we are being benevolent, then let’s be benevolent. Look out for the general health. Does that mean it will prevent infant luekemia? Of course not. But it will suck up healthcare dollars faster making for more competition for scarcer resources. You love to preface every negative with “corporate”… corporations including banks… merely make the best of the circumstances in front of them. Count on it.. it is predictable as the rising sun. At least we KNOW what they are about… they don’t couch it in terms like Hope and Change, or Affordable Helathcare Act. .. they maximize profits and heck… if government wants to be an enabler.. great.
http://www.obesityinamerica.org/statistics/index.cfm
If you can’t get a loan to keep the farm going, ie, borrow $ 50 per acre for inputs to assure your banker that at a minimum you will have enough to pay off your production credit.. you will plant corn that yields 175 – 200 bushels per acre.. and that requires nitrogen… tons and tons of it.. and herbicides and pesticides. So as that nitrogen runs off, causes nitrate bloom. strips the free oxygen from the water … you can thank the US Dept of Agriculture. Is that the pollution you speak of?
It is also a double whammy… because in Mexico where corn is native… where maize is the staple crop… they cannot afford the irrigation, fertilizers, all the inputs of an industrial farm…. where corn yields are from 7-12 bushels per acre… we bankrupted the Mexican agriculture system and made subsistance farming impossible… hence the flood of refugees to our borders. when you can connect the dots… it’s an interesting tale to tell eh? Our USDA and our “system” of farming … NAFTA far, far, fell in our favor. As was the intent. Our harvest from that was 20-30 million economic refugees and drug cartels…. and damn if we aren’t finding ways to make money from that too!
July 16, 2012 at 1:06 pm #762458
redblackParticipantmeg: since it appears you know all about the ACA, and you make it so plain that the government is taking over health care, i have a couple of questions:
1. when do i get my obamacare card so that i can start having you, the taxpayer, pick up the tab for my medical bills? (as a self-entitled liberal who wants free health care, this is very important to me.)
2. when do doctors and nurses start receiving their paychecks – and gold-plated pensions! – from the federal government (on your dime, of course)?
thank you.
July 16, 2012 at 4:22 pm #762459
JoBParticipantkootch…
if you saw me buying a treat with food stamp money you would assume that i achieved this middle age stoutness because of my bad habits..
it wouldn’t be the truth..but there you go. appearances can be deceiving.
every time you condemn someone using food stamps for the choices you see them making you are jumping to unsubstantiated conclusions based on your own assumptions that may or may not have anything to do with their reality.
the rules that result have unintended consequences..
and i can give you a really good example.
one of the dumbest moves ever was restricting those on food stamps from purchasing hot prepared food…
“taxpayers” didn’t want to see people “wasting” their money.
they assumed that everyone who purchased that food had access to a kitchen to store food and to cook.
that isn’t true.
now instead of those without kitchens being able to purchase a healthy prepared meal with their food stamps, they have to rely on the less healthy options available at their local convenience store.
that was not a win win for either homeless people or taxpayers… since we pick up the tab for the associated health care costs…
but we have no-one to blame but ourselves.
you complain incessantly about a nanny state
unless of course, you get to be the nanny.
July 16, 2012 at 5:14 pm #762460
DBPMemberI think we’ve gotta de-couple the food stamps discussion from the health care discussion. Yeah, I know, there’s a connection, but in this case looking at the two things together is obscuring the core issue, which is: How are we going to pay for the health care our people need?
We obviously have some big disagreements on this, so now more than ever we need to be thinking in terms of COMPROMISE.
As I said before, “repeal and replace” is not a compromise position. Same goes for urging people to eat healthy. Yes, eating healthy is a good thing. But in the meantime, we’ve got poor people who need to see a doctor. Telling them to eat healthy just won’t cut it.
So once again . . . in honor of 365 Stairs . . . what is the compromise position?
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July 17, 2012 at 12:36 am #762461
metrognomeParticipantinteresting editorial from the NYT on the 5 myths regarding the ACA as passed by Congress:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/the-five-myths-about-obamacare-ah64nab-162623876.html
1. ‘Obamacare is a job-killer.’ … The impartial truth squad FactCheck.org has debunked the job-killer claim so many times that in its latest update you can hear a groan of weary frustration: words like “whopper” and “bogus” and “hooey.” The job-killer claim is also discredited by the experience under the Massachusetts law on which Obamacare was modeled.
2. ‘Obamacare is a federal takeover of health insurance.’ Let’s be blunt. The word for that is “lie.”
3. ‘The unfettered marketplace is a better solution.’ To the extent there is a profound difference of principle anywhere in this debate, it lies here.
4. ‘Leave it to the states. They’ll fix it.’
5. ‘Obamacare is a loser. Run against it, run from it, but for heaven’s sake don’t run on it.’ When Mitt Romney signed that Massachusetts law in 2006, the coverage kicked in almost immediately. Robert Blendon, a Harvard expert on health and public opinion, recalls the profusion of heartwarming stories about people who had depended on emergency rooms and charity but now, at last, had a regular relationship with a doctor. Romneycare was instantly popular in the state, and remains so, though it seems to have been disowned by its creator.
Discuss among yourselves.
July 17, 2012 at 1:49 am #762462
kootchmanMemberEvery Democratic candidate for Senate is running as fast and as far from it as they can get. Repeal and replace is a compromise.. bend over and take one for the team isn’t. 179,000 pages of legislation is not a “try this. evaluate it, if it works expand it, if it doesn’t repeal it. 179,OOO pages is a massive takeover of a system that works for most of us … just fine. We sure didn’t leave what works just fine in place… nooooo.. we have the imaginings of federal workers who are pissing on the bushes to stake out territory. I KNOW my healthcare works great for me… you are HOPING Obamacare works great. That’s one helluva bargain ya make.
July 17, 2012 at 1:00 pm #762463
redblackParticipant179,OOO pages is a massive takeover of a system that works for most of us … just fine.
yeah, well what we have now (before obamacare) is not a system, it doesn’t work for tens of millions of low-income americans, and it’s driving tens of millions of middle class people into debt to insurance companies.
you have to understand that you’re just blowing smoke on this, right, kootch? intentionally sowing FUD?
come on, you can admit it among friends. because if you really believe what you’re saying, then you truly have no idea what the ACA is all about, which is heavy regulation of the insurance industry… an industry which will be getting tens of millions of new customers. and what does that do? why, it makes the pool bigger, which – unless the insurance industry are blatant liars – lowers everyone’s rates!
the government won’t be insuring a single one of those people.
maybe this is your source of confusion, because i heard a right wing caller to a left wing talk show display this misunderstanding: under obamacare, when the uninsured pay that penalty/tax for not having insurance, they still don’t have insurance. in other words, paying that fine still doesn’t get them in to see a doctor, on your dime or anyone else’s.
are we getting through, or are you going to keep on being intentionally obstinate and ignorant on this topic? or are you lying, because you really know better?
’cause i gotta tell ya’, you don’t appear to be too informed on the subject of health insurance, let alone the ACA.
July 17, 2012 at 1:37 pm #762464
miwsParticipant…..well what we have now (before obamacare) is not a system…
QFT.
FTW.
Spot on.
Etc.
When I was among a small panel of folks that spoke to UW Med students, a few months back, regarding the struggles that the poor and homeless have accessing health care, one of the other speakers, a Doctor with a clinic in Puyallup, stated that he was hesitant to even call it a “system”, because it is so broken.
Mike
July 17, 2012 at 2:18 pm #762465
JoBParticipantDBP..
“We obviously have some big disagreements on this, so now more than ever we need to be thinking in terms of COMPROMISE.”
compromise is what got us single payer which the republicans don’t recognize as a compromise even though it pretty much mirrors Romneycare…
what we need is to get serious.
if we want to contain costs and deliver quality healthcare to call.. we need single payer.
we can avoid every “pitfall in the Canadian system” by allowing those who want to pay extra for immediate service to do so with private providers.
they already do. it’s called concierge service…
July 17, 2012 at 4:26 pm #762466
DBPMemberIt’s important to try to get kootchman’s side on board with health care reform. Within reason. He’s already said he’s for some kind of reform, and others on his side have echoed that opinion. So that’s a start . . .
First we need to listen to what THEIR main issues are. Then we need to identify what OUR main issues are. Then we need to consider alternative proposals to see which ones are acceptable to both sides.
[TBC]
July 17, 2012 at 7:55 pm #762467
kootchmanMemberFine, I will start with a single proposition. One, a single payer is a monopoly. Monopolies protect their monopoly, by force of law or economic force. Monopolies always cost more. They can with impunity raise prices, cut quality or service. Tell me, what other “service” would you purchase that makes you wait as long as two hours for a 2 minute transaction? Experience the WA State DMV center? That’s a government monopoly. That’s a single payer.
July 17, 2012 at 7:59 pm #762468
DBPMemberOK, kootchman, I know this isn’t fair, but for right now, I’m going to let you stand in for the whole opposition.
As I understand it, your issues are:
1) ACA will degrade the quality/availability of existing health care.
2) ACA is too expensive, not a good value for the money.
Am I missing anything? Whatever you come up with, please try to be concise. It works better in a process like this to start with the kernel of an idea and then expand on it as needed.
Thanks.
–David
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